NFL

2012 marks my first year following an NFL season from start to finish, and one thing I learned is this: all roads in the NFL inevitably lead to betting (to the delight of sports bookies everywhere).

As I became more of a fan of the NFL, I couldn’t help but read stuff like “they covered the spread” or “they’re 7-point underdogs.” “A spread? What’s that?” It started innocuously enough from there, but as the saying goes, a thing once learned cannot be unlearned.

Now, I have never gambled in my life ever. So why start now?

As a new football fan, I like to watch as many games as I can. Obviously I’m most pumped when I’m watching my two favorite teams, the Broncos and the Giants. I also found that I enjoy watching other teams’ games when my fantasy football studs are kicking ass. But games featuring neither the Broncos, the Giants, nor any of my fantasy players couldn’t hold my interest for very long. So I figured, why not have a little something at stake, to make the games more exciting?

So on Week 12, I placed $5 bets on the underdogs of a few games. Did it work? Hell yeah. I found myself in rapt attention of games like Steelers@Browns and Titans@Jaguars (I won both).

I’m a miser at heart, so I’m not worried about turning into a degenerate gambler. I bet only minimal amounts, for not more than $30 a week. My entire betting “capital” is only $100, and will be kept at that amount forever. I never do impulse bets, like betting big on Monday night to make up for Sunday losses. It’s simply to make watching football more fun. As recreational diversions go, $100 for life is certainly on the cheap side. Any higher than that and it would cease to be fun — I felt bad when I once lost all my bets for the week; I could only imagine how this guy feels. Risking big is a slippery slope I don’t plan to be on (no high rollin’ a la Floyd Mayweather for me).

TL;DR: Betting on games is fun and can amp up the NFL viewing experience, but only if in moderation. Proceed with caution if you are impulsive and lack self-control (you might end up like these guys).

What’s the best online sportsbook?
A lot of sports betting is done online nowadays, and punters across the interwebs swear up and down on Pinnacle Sports. I signed up here and funded my account through credit card, and so far have had no problems. I have yet to withdraw, though, so time will tell whether they’ll make me jump through hoops come cash-out time. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT FUND WITH NETELLER. Neteller is a waste of time and will merely cause you a ton of headaches. AVOID NETELLER AT ALL COSTS.

Below are some conservative betting tips for fellow new casual NFL bettors. So far I have managed to preserve my capital with these betting strategies:

1. Pick the favorites when you bet on the moneyline

That’s why they’re called the favorites; they’ll probably win. And when I say favorites, I mean the proven favorites like the Patriots, and not the season’s early flash-in-the-pans like the Cardinals. You won’t win big, but it’s better to win $1 when betting $5 than nothing at all when betting on the underdogs who lose. Case in point: if you’ve bet on the Patriots since Week 1, you would’ve won 11 out of 15 times already — a pretty darn good win percentage.

2. Only bet on the spread and over/under if the odds and matchup are good

The NFL truly is “any given Sunday”. Teams are not as bad as their records suggest, and losers are often able to cover the spread. Find those value bets where the stronger team is the underdog for some reason, like the Rams on Week 12, who were +1 against the Cardinals.

3. Ignore the “experts”

I still remember the first Thursday Night Football game I ever watched — Bears@Packers on Week 1. All the “expert” commentators predicted a shoot-out. That game turned out to be a sackfest. Bottom line: unless these so-called insiders are from the future, they know the same as us — nothing.

I started betting late this year, so I’m looking forward to starting early next season and hopefully compile a winning percentage. I might even bet on the preseason to make the games bearable (I usually stop watching when the starters stop playing).

For the new foreign NFL fan, one of the first orders of business is choosingateam. This is easier said than done — unlike homegrown US fans, we are not indoctrinated from childhood to support our hometown or parents’ team. Some folks go for years without a team and just root for the game itself, but it definitely is more engaging to have a team to cheer for.

With 32 teams ripe for the picking, here are some tips on how to choose the team that’s right for you:

1. Through NFL 360

NFL 360 is a website by the NFL aimed at its international fans. One of its features is an interactive team picker that offers three ways to select a team.

Pros: Quick and easy. And the rest of the site is great, with lots of helpful info and videos for newbies.

Cons: Random much? Parameters include making you choose between The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys…not exactly the most relevant way to forge a lasting attachment to a football team.

Pick a city or state you’ve been to, would like to go to, or have friends and family in. This is how I picked my first team, the Dallas Cowboys — when I first got into the NFL, I happened to be visiting my cousin in Texas, who lives less than 10 miles away from Cowboys Stadium. Naturally she took me there for a tour, where I proceeded to be amazed by American Decadence™ at its finest. We certainly don’t have TV screens like this in my corner of the globe:

Pros: If you have friends and family in the area, you’ll have a place to stay and someone to go with if you make the trek to watch an actual game.

Cons: The team of your preferred city could be a losing or middling team.

3. By performance

Not having any strong hometown or familial team obligations, foreign fans have the luxury of not having to root for perpetually losing teams like the Cleveland Browns.

My Cowboys fandom was short-lived for this reason — at that time, Tony Romo was injured and they were sitting at an ignominious 0-2…not the most enticing beginning to a brand-new fan. My interest in the NFL waned for the rest of the season until Super Bowl XLV, the first full game I ever watched. I didn’t know anything about the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but I transferred my tenuous loyalty to the former, because hey, they won.

Pros: Obviously it’s easier and more fun to root for a winning or promising team. Nobody wants to go through this:

A winning team also has a higher possibility of making the playoffs, giving you more games to look forward to beyond the regular season. Who knows, they might even win the big one.

Cons: As history shows, a team’s rosy streak of winning seasons could abruptly turn for the worst when its top playmakers retire, are injured, or go to another team. For the most recent and glaring example, see last season’s Peyton Manning-less Indianapolis Colts, who went from perennial playoff contenders to worst team in the NFL.

4. By appearance

If you’re going to root for a team and watch their games, you’re going to be spending a lot of time staring at the team logo and the players’ uniforms, so it definitely helps if they appeal to your aesthetic sensibilities. This eliminates teams like the Arizona Cardinals:

…no thanks, I think I’ll pass on the funny-looking chicken bird. I could not sustain my enthusiasm for my second team, the Packers, for this reason — the combination of those shades of green and yellow (or “gold” as they call it) together is simply atrocious:

Same goes with the Cowboys — while certainly bedazzled by their swanky stadium, I cringed when I first saw their uniforms with the too-shiny, unmanly pants:

Pros: You’ll probably be wanting to buy team jerseys and other apparel in the future. Your vanity is at stake — if they don’t look good on the players, it doesn’t bode well for you.

Cons: Apparently there will be new uniforms by Nike for the upcoming season, so the look you like best right now might not be around for long.

5. By personnel

For homegrown fans, it’s always “team first”. They stick with their team, no matter if its players are crackheads or rapists. Many US fans seem to hate their own players; see Exhibit A:

Foreign fans are not held hostage by such hometown or familial ties, and are free to choose a team with players they actually like (or who are less criminally-inclined). Thanks to the sublime NFL Films, “the most effective propaganda organ in the history of corporate America” per Sports Illustrated, we are given plenty of opportunity to get to know the players up close and personal. The NFL is not just the best sports league in America; it is arguably also the country’s best reality TV show. It has characters galore to suit every taste — The Golden Boy, The Drama Queen, The Saint, The Loudmouth, to name a few. With guys like these, who needs Jersey Shore?

Pros: As you follow a team you become more invested in them, so it definitely helps if you like the players — and coaches and owners — as people. You might find it difficult to support the Philadelphia Eagles if you’re a dog lover.

Cons: This is the NFL; there will always be ex-convicts and a-holes on any team. And if by some miracle there aren’t, it’s only a matter of time before a member of your chosen team, perhaps even your favorite player, shoots his own leg, punches a woman in the face, or runs over a pedestrian. You are also faced with a dilemma if your favorite player goes to another team. Do you, for instance, remain a Colts fan, or jump ship and follow Peyton Manning?

This is how I chose my third and final team, the New York Giants. I became a fan after watching the story of the 2007 team on America’s Game: The Super Bowl Champions. It also happens that they fit all the previous criteria:

NFL 360: One of the teams I got was the Giants.

Location: I have a cousin in New Jersey who is also a fan.

Performance: Since Eli Manning became the full starting quarterback, they’ve never had a losing season, went to the playoffs five times, and won the Super Bowl twice.

Appearance: Forgive me if I go all Project Runway, but I’ve always thought they have the best uniforms in the league:

Rich shades of blue and red that blend well together, a logo that doesn’t look ridiculous on their helmets, no crazy stripes and patterns — they appeal to my minimalist aesthetic. Same goes for their away uniforms. The clincher is the pants, which are in a complementary shade of gray. They’re neither shiny, white, nor matchy-matchy — three things that ruin the look of all other NFL uniforms.

Now, a lot of things could happen — Victor Cruz could turn into a bigger diva than Terrell Owens, Nike could change their uniforms to psychedelic messes, Eli could go down and the Giants become the next season’s Colts, the Mara and Tisch families could move the franchise to Alaska — but I think I’m set. Go Giants!

I have recently gotten hooked on America’s favorite game, pro football. Being an NFL fan outside the US has been a solitary experience, with efforts to convert others met with the same tepid response along the lines of “I don’t get it” and “it looks complicated”. Sadly, in my corner of the globe where football is soccer, I’m the only one within a 1000+++ mile radius who knows what the NFL is. It doesn’t help that it’s not on TV here, not even on cable. The only way to watch anything NFL-related is online, and fortunately there are many ways to do just that:

Lots of features, but a bit steep. And why only select Super Bowls and games from the previous two years in the archives? Don’t Netflix and Hulu Plus offer a gazillion movies and all seasons of TV shows for only $7.99/month? Homegrown fans in the US may be inured to forking out huge dough to get their NFL fix on TV, but most of the rest of us are not. C’mon NFL, steep pricing is not the way to expand your offshore popularity.

One solution to offset the cost would be to split it with other overseas fans, like what the Aussie folks over here did.

Update 3/21: I caved in and signed up for a month (their offseason rate is $24.99/month). I’ve watched two games so far, and I’m pretty satisfied:

Tip: use an address from a state with no internet sales tax, like Delaware, so you don’t incur additional charges. Click here for a Delaware address (thanks, Google Maps).

Drawbacks: DRM, and no content older than 2006. NFL Films has recently made their entire catalog available through special order on DVD; why not on iTunes? C’mon NFL, it’s 2012; the DVD is practically obsolete.

Video section is here. Kudos to the NFL for making lots of content from NFL Network and NFL Films available for free on their website, and accessible anywhere in the world to boot. There is nothing more annoying than visiting a US website and encountering the message: “Sorry, this video can only be watched from within the United States.”

I lurve NFL Films, and Hulu just happens to have hundreds of full episodes of its programs, dating as far back as the 1950s. Yes, this is exactly one of those websites that flash the aforementioned US-only message, but again there is a workaround: you can use an anonymous US proxy or Hotspot Shield to get a US IP address.